Subject: MYSTARA-L Digest - 15 Jul 2002 to 16 Jul 2002 (#2002-183) From: Automatic digest processor Date: 17/07/2002, 17:00 To: Recipients of MYSTARA-L digests Reply-to: Mystara RPG Discussion There are 16 messages totalling 841 lines in this issue. Topics of the day: 1. RULES: OD&D Continuity / Mystara Timeline (2) 2. Mystaran Almanac: AC1018 Events (a short review) (6) 3. Acroynms and the Almanacs 4. MYSTARA: websites 5. MYSTARA: RULES: A Pachydon from beyond the stars 6. Vaults of Pandius (5) ******************************************************************** The Other Worlds Homepage: http://www.wizards.com/dnd/OtherWorlds.asp The Mystara Homepage: http://www.dnd.starflung.com/ To unsubscribe, send email to LISTSERV@ORACLE.WIZARDS.COM with UNSUB MYSTARA-L in the body of the message. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Tue, 16 Jul 2002 18:40:30 +1000 From: Alfred O'Meagher Subject: RULES: OD&D Continuity / Mystara Timeline To solve some of the complaints of myself and others I am going to = prepare a flow chart of possible events for the years 1000 to 1200 = inclusive. Anyone with any notes on individual years or periods in this = range, please email me at nineunknown@hotmail.com=20 with same. When finished I will give a copy of the Mystaran Netbook of = Days to the list and also have it up on my club's site and on our DM's = campaign site. -Alf ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 16 Jul 2002 04:22:02 -0700 From: Chris Furneaux Subject: Re: Mystaran Almanac: AC1018 Events (a short review) > Acronyms really don't fit fantasy game worlds. They > are just another > isolationist symptom of clique thinking. Why > wouldn't it just still be > Alphatia? because alphatia sank. There is no more alphatia on the surface world. The council of mages died. Thus there was a New Alphatian Empire from the reminants of the old. And thats what Canon says. IMNSHO I do not want to say New Alphatian Empire every time I want to refer to the Alphatia without Alphatia. While it took me months to figure out the whole Nayce thing when I first joined the list it is only because Mystara hasn't stayed dead but has been kept alive by the amazing efforts of a dedicated bunch of people. And I thank them for it. IMO Nayce is useful like mystara is useful. We use it to define something but it is not nesessaraly what the people in the world would use. > It won't attract new fans who have recently > purchased the original works. Who will that be? not many I imagine. > In fact the users of the original stuff are going to > pretty much outnumber the online almanack users 10 > to 1 based on sales and the way their own websites > are going Yes and your point is? The PWA's are set BEFORE the MA's, as is all other official material. The MA's are not designed as an alternative to canon, but a development and continuation of the world. It says nothing of quality of product, usefulness, or anything else bar one is more used because it WAS printed by TSR at some point. > This list is very cool, but I am already sick of the > clique-ish almanack. It's twaddle. Ouch. I didn't write for it but that still hurts. If you don't like it, be constructive or shut up. Just don't put down people who are actually producing something. The Almanac is an ideas machine and it is very good IMO. > Any DM worth the name has a cartload of their own > stuff, they don't need an almanack unless it is > inspirational and full of useful details and maps. Isn't it? I thought it was? > Otherwise it's just an attempt at being elitist and > forcing one person's view of a fantasy world on to > everybody else. *cough* what are you on? *cough* It's just a game and it is just for enjoyment. All I saw in your e-mail was you "being elitist and forcing (*your*) one person's view of a fantasy world on to everybody else." according to your e-mail the almanac is crap. If that is your opinion, you are welcome to it but don't be a hipocrit, nobody likes them. If people all thought it was crap they wouldn't use it, read it, write it, quote it, or praise it; which all happen. Clearly some people won't like some things but overall I think people appreciate it. > Also, it's odd how canon is "canon" but nevertheless > is changed on a whim > when it suits the online almanack creators. Examples please. Canon is not always consistant and AFAIK the Almanac has always strived to stay true to the published material. Very little in the Almanac seems to be done on a whim with potential for input at many times. If you believe that something is not right Herve is DESPERATE for more authors and contributors. It is amazing that they can actually produce one each year and it is of the quality and size that it is. So to all the Almanac staff from me, well done. Chris. __________________________________________________ Do You Yahoo!? Yahoo! Autos - Get free new car price quotes http://autos.yahoo.com ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 16 Jul 2002 22:38:05 +1000 From: Alfred O'Meagher Subject: Re: Mystaran Almanac: AC1018 Events (a short review) The fanbase of most profitable d20 publishers produce more stuff than the MA team, and there are usually fewer people doing it. I agree totally with the other poster who commented that the almanack just reads like notes from someone's campaign. Campaign notes are all well and good, but we all do that anyway. The campaign I play in produces about double the almanack output each quarter, mainly because most of the contributors are just happy players producing Bard journalism pieces and writeups of new classes, kits and variants they have encountered. And I am correcting the defects that I perceive - cf previous post on the Netbook of Days. I am going to collate the information for the years 1000 to 1200 AC inclusive, from originally published TSR stuff, then from the notes and comments of the game designers, then from the online contributions from the designers then from fan sources. All fan material will be italicised so it is clear that it is an addendum and not in any way official. ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 16 Jul 2002 14:58:00 +0200 From: =?iso-8859-1?q?la=20Volpe?= Subject: Re: Acroynms and the Almanacs Hello Peter and MML fellows all I think that there must be some sort of misunderstanding going on here. 1) the MML and the Almanac people are two completely different things 2) the Vaults of Pandius is absolutely not clique-ish, and is not trying to force anything on anyone. ALL the Mystara related material that has been written by fans has been uploaded by Shawn...so you can find ideas and contributions from all sort of campaigns and people...not really a way to force something. Instead, there had been some discussion in the past on this issue because some felt that a newcomer may have problems for this reason because he would find a loose set of articles instead than a coherent net-campaing setting... 3) People still keep asking for contributions: Hervè has repeatedly pleaded for help because the Almanac needs writers; I am working on the Modrigswerg and have posted my ideas to the list because I want to have some consensus and some input from the list members regarding them before writing a coherent article...and so on. 4) The MML is the RIGHT PLACE to do any Mystara-related rant, as long as we remain polite, friendly and non-aggressive - and you have been polite, friendly and non-aggressive, so it's ok. Greetings all, Iulius Sergius Scaevola Captain of the XXth Cohort Port Lucinius, Thyatis ______________________________________________________________________ Scarica il nuovo Yahoo! Messenger: con webcam, nuove faccine e tante altre novità. http://it.yahoo.com/mail_it/foot/?http://it.messenger.yahoo.com/ ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 16 Jul 2002 09:35:46 -0400 From: Geoff Gander Subject: Re: Mystaran Almanac: AC1018 Events (a short review) Alfred wrote: > The fanbase of most profitable d20 publishers produce more stuff than the MA > team, and there are usually fewer people doing it. I agree totally with the > other poster who commented that the almanack just reads like notes from > someone's campaign. Well, I can't speak for everyone who works on the Almanac (but I think most would agree with me here), but the work that I do certainly doesn't come from my campaign. I took what was written in DotE and other sources, threw in a couple of elements from the Vaults and my own ideas, and extrapolated it into a series of events that a DM could use as the basis for an adventure, or even a campaign. I think I can speak for the others in saying that the sole intent of this work is to provide DMs with ideas for their campaigns. Do we expect them to use everything as is? Not at all! As others have said, we encourage people to take the ideas and run with them, or change them around to suit their campaigns - whatever they wish to do is cool. Besides, I think most DMs run low on gas now and then (proverbially speaking) - and perhaps some of those events might inspire them to do something really interesting for their players... Now this is something I'd be interesting in seeing. Is there any way you could share some of these ideas with the List? Many people here are always hungry for more critters, classes, magic items, and such. I would also be interested in seeing your Book of Days, too. One final remark. Although the discussion so far has been civil, a couple of people have said things that could (in a less mature forum) lead to ugly arguments and flame wars. A free and frank discussion about the Almanac is great (in fact, some writers have already taken action on the comments raised here concerning plotlines), but please refrain from insults, or from saying something you'll regreat later on. Thanks! Geoff -- Geoff Gander, BA 97, MPA 02 Carnifex Loremaster/Mad Roleplayer Master of the Elemental Plane of Bureaucracy au998@freenet.carleton.ca : www.geocities.com/TimesSquare/Realm/2091 ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 17 Jul 2002 02:29:34 +1000 From: Alfred O'Meagher Subject: MYSTARA: websites I found a cool D&D website that is filled with D&D Conan material, lots = of it would fit into any normal Mystara 3e campaign really well: http://www.fyrestryke.com/adilbrand/conan.htm ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 17 Jul 2002 03:01:24 +1000 From: Alfred O'Meagher Subject: MYSTARA: RULES: A Pachydon from beyond the stars This is from the Conan site I listed earlier, but wow! it is an = excellent writeup, firstly, a format greatly to be imitated for Mystara = works IMO. Also, for a race like the Pachydons that haven't exactly set = the game world on fire, this NPC might be just the ticket. BTW if you = haven't read the story and the comics - do yourselves a massive favour = and indulge. Yag Kosha (Yogah of Yag) (circa "The Tower of the Elephant") Medium Outsider 18th level Wizard Hit Dice 2d8+18d4 (54 Hit Points) Speed: 30 ft. AC: 13 (+3 Dex) Attacks: Slam +12/+7/+2; or Gore +12/+7/+2 Damage: Slam 1d6+1 or Gore 1d3+1 Face/Reach: 5 ft. by 5 ft./5 ft.=20 Special Attacks: Spells Special Qualities: Darkvision 60' (before he was blinded); sense death Saves: Fort +9, Ref +9, Will +14 Abilities: Str 12, Dex 11, Con 10, Int 30, Wis 26, Cha 17 Skills: Listen +29, Spot +31, Search +31, Knowledge (Arcana) +33, = Alchemy +31, Concentration +21, Spellcraft +31, Scry +31, Knowledge = (Religion) +31, Knowledge (Nature) +31. Feats: Alertness, Blind Fighting, Create Wonderous Item, Empower Spell, = Combat Casting, Flyby Attack (useless now that his wings are gone), = Spell Mastery (Abjuration), Spell Mastery (Divination), Skill Focus = (Knowledge Arcana) Maximize Spell, Still Spell Climate/Terrain: Zamora Organization: Solitary Challenge Rating: 20 Treasure: Standard Alignment: Neutral Advancement: By Character Class. =20 "I am very old, O man of the waste countries; long and long ago I came = to this planet with others of my world, from the green planet Yag, which = circles for ever in the outer fringe of this universe. We swept through = space on mighty wings that drove us through the cosmos quicker than = light, because we had warred with the kings of Yag and were defeated and = outcast. But we could never return, for on earth our wings withered = from our shoulders." ~Robert E. Howard, "The Tower of the Elephant" =20 Yag Kosha, also called Yogah of Yag, is a being from the planet Yag. He = is ages upon ages old, and was worshipped as a god in Khitai before Yara = enslaved him. A wise creature, he was part of a rebellion on his home = planet and was exiled. =20 Other than his green skin and elephant head, Yogah looks humanoid. He = no longer has the wings he boasted of to Conan. =20 Of the several utterly alien life forms from dark worlds barely guessed = at by man that Conan encountered, only Yag Kosha from the green planet = Yag could really be considered benevolent. He prefers white magic and = will only cast black magic if forced to, either through guile or perhaps = his own sense of vengeance. =20 Yag Kosha was forced to serve Yara for three hundred years, tortured by = fire, rack, and more inhuman methods. =20 Yag Kosha is older than can probably be comprehended by mortal man. He = arrived before men evolved from the ape. He was around during the time = of King Kull, before the sinking of Atlantis. =20 Combat In his prime (before Yara broke him) he could fight bare handed or with = his tusks (a gore attack). Now all he has left is magic and sorcery, = and most of that is gone at this point. He really can't even use his = tusks, as Yara tipped the tusks with round golden balls. Sense Death: Yag Kosha could sense death around him, and could tell if = a man killed anything in the last twenty four hours. ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 17 Jul 2002 05:56:08 +1000 From: shawn stanley Subject: Vaults of Pandius At 22:07 15/07/02 +0100, Peter Scrivener wrote: > Also the websites such as Vaults of Pandius is useful for the sections such > as listing the immortals and country write ups but I agree with some > previous people who say it feels like a clique. how does the Vaults feel like a clique? > I think any website or > community like Mystara would seem to be a closed group and could be looked > at as trying to push their view of Mystara forward now that Vaults is the > official Mystara website. The Vaults, does and always has, contain articles written up about Dungeons and Dragons, Mystara or any particular campaign version of the world based on Mystara or using the basic D&D rules. I've never rejected material that fits into those categories or rejected materials that I don't want to push. For the record I have rejected any material full stop. I don't put onto the site small one-line ideas that aren't fully or coherently developed, it's not feasible for me or anybody who's doing something like this in their spare time to do that - so if anybody feels like their ideas aren't being portrayed on the Vaults then maybe it's because they're not developing those ideas into some kind of article. Groups like the Almanac group or prolific individuals through time like Bruce Heard, Geoff Gander, Andrew Theisen, Sharon Dornhoff, James Mishler or any numbers of others have their views over-represented on the Vaults because these people have taken the time to write more articles. Back when the Vaults became the official site I was given the opportunity by Wizards, in essence, to start canonising new material - for the Vaults to portray the single view of the game world of Mystara. I decided not to do that because I didn't want to form a clique, because the Vaults did and does contain lots of interesting material that breaks pre-established canon and new stuff which doesn't agree with each other. You might beleive that the Vaults being the official site and containg things like the Almanac and numerous articles by a small group of people means that these things are canon or that we have formed a clique but that is not the case. I host anything sent to the public Mystaran forums and anything else that individuals want me to host, that's all. Sorry if I'm going a bit overboard here, but yeah I am feeling a little miffed here. shawn - an apparent clique of one ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 16 Jul 2002 13:48:34 -0700 From: Mike Harvey Subject: Re: Vaults of Pandius Shawn Stanley wrote: > Back when the Vaults became the official site I was given the > opportunity by Wizards, in essence, to start canonising new > material - for the Vaults to portray the single view of the > game world of Mystara. I decided not to do that because I > didn't want to form a clique, because the Vaults did and > does contain lots of interesting material that breaks pre- > established canon and new stuff which doesn't agree with each > other. Thank you Shawn, both for running a great site and for your "open" policy. Out of all the world-oriented sites I've seen, both official and otherwise, the Vaults is by far the most useful and eclectic... and the least cliquish. When the official site thing was first announced I was apprehensive to say the least, concerned about someone picking and choosing what would be canon and otherwise. If you want to see "cliquish" take a look at Living Greyhawk! Anyway, just wanted to say "thanks" and I hope you don't change a thing. :-) Mike -- Mike Harvey -- Beaverton, OR http://members.dsl-only.net/~bing/ ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 16 Jul 2002 15:57:45 -0500 From: Eric Anondson Subject: Re: Vaults of Pandius >> Also the websites such as Vaults of Pandius is useful for the sections >> such as listing the immortals and country write ups but I agree with >> some previous people who say it feels like a clique. > > how does the Vaults feel like a clique? It absolutely doesn't. I think the person must be projecting their perceptions of other parts of the Mystara community onto the Vaults. > Sorry if I'm going a bit overboard here, but yeah I am feeling a little > miffed here. I can totally understand your umbrage, Sean. I can vouch that Sean really doesn't exclude any content based on how well known someone is or how much they produce. I'm not a frequent poster by any means and something I posted once ended up on Sean's site. If anyone is seeing 'cliquishness' in how the Vaults is run, it's in their head. Eric Anondson ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 16 Jul 2002 22:28:03 +0100 From: Peter Scrivener Subject: Vaults of Pandius Um I am just writing again on a previous email I did just to clear up what I said and apologise to anyone I might have inadvertently offended. When I said the Mystaran community can FEEL like a clique is because it doesn't matter how welcoming the community is, for new people everyone seems to know each other and the work that has been put looks like the same few people. I myself find that the Vaults is a superb site and very useful, I was just trying to point out how it can look to someone coming in new. As for other official sites or message boards I will plead ignorance as whenever I DM I use Mystara and never really venture onto other world websites or mailing lists. __________________________________________________ Do You Yahoo!? Sign up for SBC Yahoo! Dial - First Month Free http://sbc.yahoo.comm ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 16 Jul 2002 17:58:48 -0500 From: Stone Marshall Subject: Re: RULES: OD&D Continuity / Mystara Timeline Well, IMC (oops! ;) In my campaign, we play in 1264 AC so no helping me there! LOL Multizar the Mage > From: Alfred O'Meagher > Reply-To: Mystara RPG Discussion > To: MYSTARA-L@ORACLE.WIZARDS.COM > Subject: [MYSTARA] RULES: OD&D Continuity / Mystara Timeline > Date: Tue, 16 Jul 2002 18:40:30 +1000 > > To solve some of the complaints of myself and others I am going to prepare > a flow chart of possible events for the years 1000 to 1200 inclusive. > Anyone with any notes on individual years or periods in this range, please > email me at > > nineunknown@hotmail.com > > with same. When finished I will give a copy of the Mystaran Netbook of Days > to the list and also have it up on my club's site and on our DM's campaign > site. > > -Alf > > ******************************************************************** > The Other Worlds Homepage: http://www.wizards.com/dnd/OtherWorlds.asp > The Mystara Homepage: http://www.dnd.starflung.com/ > To unsubscribe, send email to LISTSERV@ORACLE.WIZARDS.COM > with UNSUB MYSTARA-L in the body of the message. _________________________________________________________________ Join the world’s largest e-mail service with MSN Hotmail. http://www.hotmail.com ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 16 Jul 2002 16:10:26 -0700 From: The Stalker Subject: Re: Mystaran Almanac: AC1018 Events (a short review) On Tue, 16 Jul 2002 22:38:05 +1000, Alfred O'Meagher wrote: > The fanbase of most profitable d20 publishers produce more stuff than the MA > team, and there are usually fewer people doing it. I agree totally with the > other poster who commented that the almanack just reads like notes from > someone's campaign. Campaign notes are all well and good, but we all do that > anyway. Boy, are you ever missing your mark! As Geoff said, we write stuff for the specific purpose of making something useful for people. All the stuff you see in the MA is either completely new (whether inspired from other sources or not) or continuations of established plots or characters in previous canon. None of it is from our own campaigns, at least not as far as I know. If you look at Geoff's own website you'll find he has a complete alternate progress of events during WOTI and afterwards, and IMC I've developed masses of NPCs who haven't and never will find their way into the almanac. Why? Because I want complete control over their fates as DM, and I somehow lose that by using them in the MA. For instance, IMC there is a Hans von Hendriks who is with the Heldannic Knights and who was never in the HW (unlike Anna). There is a Thyatian bounty hunter named Ferenus Bertillis and his band of cutthroat hunters, one of them an iron golem, who are basically the Mystaran version of Boba Fett and his various cronies from The Empire Strikes Back. And there is a nasty and mysterious high-priestess of Hel who has shown up once or twice. All these characters are well- developed recurring 'villains' with stats and back-story etc., and they will never be in the almanacs. Similarly I established large lists of NPCs of Mystara's past and so which are also completely unrelated to the MA, though you can find them in the Vaults. My 'Stalker' persona is also a recurring character IMC for now, but you won't find him in the MA, though I do seem to recall Herve has encouraged us to establish such characters. As a former PC of mine he naturally has a well-established background, but I'm not sure I'd want him in the MA since people (and I agree with them) tend to hate blatant 'Marty-Stu' characters like Elminster who always solve the problems at the end - I leave that in the Realms... > The campaign I play in produces about double the almanack output > each quarter, mainly because most of the contributors are just happy players > producing Bard journalism pieces and writeups of new classes, kits and > variants they have encountered. Well, you're lucky then. I just don't have time to write it all down, and my players write very little or nothing at all. > And I am correcting the defects that I perceive - cf previous post on the > Netbook of Days. I am going to collate the information for the years 1000 to > 1200 AC inclusive, from originally published TSR stuff, then from the notes > and comments of the game designers, then from the online contributions from > the designers then from fan sources. All fan material will be italicised so > it is clear that it is an addendum and not in any way official. > Fine. You assume we have a problem with that? We don't. And the MA has *never* been branded as 'official' or 'canon' in any way. The topic has been discussed, of course, and I do admit that I belong among those who would give the MA a brand of 'semi-canon', but that is not so much because of a desire to 'control Mystara' as it is because the MA is the one effort where a lot of us participate to find some common ground and establish something. It's a huge process with lots of battles for people's ideas, and I think that deserves a little recognition. Not everybody likes what is the MA, and none of us probably like all of it. I know there things in them I don't care so much for (and which I can/will just ignore IMC). But the MA is still the one fan-project that forms the consensus of the net community because the majority wrote it and thus, in some way, support it. What will really be interesting to see is whether you'll also correct the 'defects' you see in canon, as there are indeed several. For instance, Aleena Halaran of Threshold in Karameikos is married in AC 1010 according to PWA1, yet the K:KoA has an adventure where she is in love with a druid two years later... Or how about WOTI which states that all magic, even Immortal magic, failed during the Week Without Magic (WWM), yet the islands of Floating Ar in Alphatia did not crash... Or when the WWM actually took place. The book says it killed Eriadna and destroyed Sundsvall, which leaves Zandor in power to order the Council of Wizards to assault Glantri, yet the book then later says that the WWM occurs as a response to the magical energy released by that attack, suggesting a second WWM which does not seem possible given the drain on the Radiance (which just wasn't enough to cause a second WWM)... Yes, you can find 'mistakes' in the MAs if you look for them (I know I wrote some...), but you'll find them in canon material too. - The Stalker ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 16 Jul 2002 17:24:04 -0700 From: Bleakcabal Subject: Re: Vaults of Pandius As far as I know the Vaults will publish any material that's related to Mystara. Shawn as never rejected any of my stuff, even when I was new and hadn't written anything for Mystara. I have found him to be very cooperative and understanding. You can always email him about something on the site and he will try to acomodate you. In fact I remember a few months ago when he changed the site designs he asks for feedback from anyone and was open to our opinions. The site is great and I visit it often. Keep up the good work Shawn ! _____________________________________________________________ GameDev.net Email Service - "Plenty of 1's and 0's" _____________________________________________________________ Promote your group and strengthen ties to your members with email@yourgroup.org by Everyone.net http://www.everyone.net/?btn=tag ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 17 Jul 2002 00:50:15 -0400 From: Dan Eustace Subject: Re: Mystaran Almanac: AC1018 Events (a short review) > The fanbase of most profitable d20 publishers produce more stuff than the MA > team, and there are usually fewer people doing it. Who are these profitable publishers, and where are the sites to access their material? As a campaign world that went out of print ~10 years ago, I find the amount of fan material for Mystara quite impressive. In fact, I wonder where some of the people find the time to come up with as much stuff as they do. And although the almanac lists many contributors, the number of people who do the bulk of the writing is significantly less (my guess is a dozen or so main writers, with others contributing "flavor" pieces or providing feedback). I agree totally with the > other poster who commented that the almanack just reads like notes from > someone's campaign. Campaign notes are all well and good, but we all do that > anyway. Well, the almanac format was originated by TSR to give brief adventure ideas and summary descriptions of nations, NPCs, etc. We just continued their work because it was a popular format. If your campaign notes are this good, then more power to you. My players are lucky if they jot down a few names of people or places! The campaign I play in produces about double the almanack output > each quarter, mainly because most of the contributors are just happy players > producing Bard journalism pieces and writeups of new classes, kits and > variants they have encountered. Double the almanac each quarter? That would be 900 pages considering the events, alone. What type of campaign is this (PBeM or live)? Sometimes its a struggle just to get everyone together to play a game once a quarter! The things that my players have produced over the years have been rare. Mostly they like to play D&D and are not interested in running games, developing the campaign world, rules issues, and so forth. As such, I do all of the work and they show up to play. It sounds like you have a unique situation, since most gamers have far too many demands on their time for that kind of commitment. Maybe you would care to share some of this work with the list (or direct us to a website, if it isn't relevant to the MML). ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 17 Jul 2002 15:25:19 +1000 From: Alfred O'Meagher Subject: Re: Mystaran Almanac: AC1018 Events (a short review) The sites are pretty easy to find, I usually look for a product name then ignore all the stupid amazon sites and secondhand for sale sites and all that crap and head for the sites with active campaigns or with netbooks and so on. Our DM lets us use stuff we find after it's been vetted by him and the other players. The self-appointed big name sites are sometimes good but a lot of them have sod all usueful stuff on them. Red Dragon Inn is pretty good, Realm of Meln, are good sites. Just search outside the normal go-to sites and avoid the official D&D Wizards site - not because there's nothing on it but because you already know where that one is and what it has on it. It depends really on whether you're looking for Mystara-specific stuff (not much around) or stuff that is an excellent match for Mystara (tons of stuff around). Lots of people seem to have kept stuff out of Mystara but not slavishly followed the later publications. Following the official figures for sales from some of the valuation sites and so on it would follow that most people exposed to what became Mystara actually froze their knowledge of it at a very early point - like back in the Isle of Dread kind of era. Newer players have still also encountered that era preferentially because more of the Isleo f Dread module and its boxed set were produced than most of the other stuff. Now with the ESDs and so forth people are going back to it once again. According to Fantaseum's poll, the forum sites polls, valuation sites polls and the big download sites polls, 3e gets about 40% to 45% of the market, 2e about 30% and everything else about 25%-30%. Since the basic "Mystara" setting was really quite vanilla, with increasingly strange and specific stuff added as time went on, it follows that there is a colossal residuum of useable material, and it's pretty much everywhere. Like the chap doing the Vampire / Mystara stuff, with a setting that has "classic" monsters it is actually pretty easy to support variants like the Vampire project, because there is no weird version of the monster set as the default in Mystara. Likewise, there is a 3e campaign site detailing their adventures based on piracy on the high seas and so forth - terrific fun and basic useful research for the many seaborne adventures Mystara should also be home to. A quick consideration of numbers of aircraft versus numbers of surface vessels in Mystara should establish that seaborne adventures would be way more common due to the sheer volume of ocean traffic. Also, all the Atlantis stuf online is a no-brainer for Alphatia, our very own drowned continent. Instead of accepting that the survivors struggle on with some inane equivalent of an anachronistic pseudo-empire, why wouldn't the survivors' efforts come to naught, so that Alphatia becomes like Mycenae, a vanished race and culture that produces sub-Alphatian nations with bits and pieces of vanished Alphatian lore? Much more interesting. Also, the game designers gave Alphatia the kiss of death - shouldn't that mean that the canon zombies should let it drop also? In terms of official sites or what have you, I think the Birthright support site wins pretty much hands down. It is beautifully laid out, lovingly detailed, added to in a coherent way and still caters to any potential variant by clearly setting out styles of play and reviews of same by people who tried it. The entire look and feel is fantastic and closely follows the colour scheme and professionalism of the original rulebooks. Navigation is simple and the core information on the setting is summarised and correctly indexed. The links are updated regularly and the additional rules are set out alongside sidebars of canon information. I use it a lot because Birthright is one of the other rules sets we use in our campaign. My legacy holder mixes it up with cinnabryl mutants. It's great that some Mystara fans make the effort to do an almanack at all, I just hope they don't hurt their hands patting themselves on the back all the time. It's pretty good, but not great. You should check back in with the other "dead" settings people out there, because some of them are kicking a$$. I agree that nothing could be worse than the clique mentality of Living Greyhawk, although we don't know how much of that is due to the baleful influence of EGG of Coot himself back in the day. However, the online Greyhawk started off with the best of intentions, and was, once, disturbingly similar to Mystara's current almanack. Possibly the best thing to happen D&D will be if Hasbro sells the brand name for some quick bucks. That way Mystara might actually be resurrected in useable form. Anyway I get to practice what I preach soon because I am getting some pages to do with what I wish. I will be putting up the Shannara-oid Mystara campaign and I will also put up all the files and so on I found online. I will post the address once it is all finished and up and running. ------------------------------ End of MYSTARA-L Digest - 15 Jul 2002 to 16 Jul 2002 (#2002-183) ****************************************************************